Nasdaq · February 27, 2020

First week of the fastest fall on record

-4.61%

single-day change vs previous close

Part of a longer stretch

The COVID crash on the Nasdaq

early in it · 2020-02-19 → 2020-03-23, -30.12% over the whole period

What happened that day?

The Nasdaq fell 4.61% to close at 8,566.48. No single trigger for the day could be pinned down
This was the week the direction flipped, days after the index had set a record high
The epidemic was moving from something inside China to something spreading elsewhere
What the market could not price was not the disease but the duration. If you do not know how long factories and shops stay shut, you cannot compute profits
The episode fell 30.12% from the 19 February high to the 23 March low. This day sits in its first week
The speed was the unusual part — close to a third of the index gone in a little over a month

Sources

Every figure on this page is recomputed from the original daily closing prices and checked against them at build time. The account of what happened is put together from the public record; where a specific source was consulted it is listed above.